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Ekklesia, UK
Jan 27 2015
'Keep the memory alive': Holocaust Memorial Day 2015
by Simon Barrow on 27 January 2015 - 7:45am
Events are taking place around the British and Irish isles to mark
Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday 27 January 2015. The theme for this
year is 'Keep the memory alive'.
Seventy commemorative candles designed by Anish Kapoor are being lit
in every part of the country, to represent the 70 years since the
liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Earlier this week, Channel 4 television showed a remarkable
documentary entitled 'Night Will Fall' about the story of those who
filmed the terrible scenes in the Nazi death camps for a movie by
Sidney Bernstein (with assistance from Alfred Hitchcock) which was not
completed or shown immediately after the war, due to the sensitivity
of the material.
It contains some of the most graphic and horrific documentary evidence
of the crimes committed, and is a difficult to watch as it is
important. It also features filmmaker Branko Lustin, a producer who
filmed in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and who gave his account of
what it was like to film inside the camps. "I had peered into hell...
it is hard to describe," he said.
'Night Will Fall', which lasts 80 minutes, has been screened in over
15 countries in the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day, and will be
available online for another 27 days, as well as on catch-up TV
provider services.
Meanwhile, the HMD website contains a good overview article on 'The
Holocaust and the Genocides' (plural) which sets out the horror that
afflicted many millions under the Nazis, and other atrocities,
including the Armenian Genocide, which is still not officially
recognised by Turkey, Israel and others.
In fact the term 'genocide' was first used in 1933, in a paper
presented to the League of Nations by the Polish lawyer, Raphael
Lemkin. He devised the concept in response to the atrocities
perpetrated against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire
between 1915 and 1923.
On 11 December 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations
resolved that genocide was a crime under international law. This was
approved and ratified as a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948.
The Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- killing members of the group
- causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group".
Gregory H Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, has developed a
typology of the Eight Stages of genocide which explains the different
components that lead to genocidal outcomes.
References and resources:
* 'Night Will Fall' (C4):
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/holocaust-night-will-fall/on-demand/5...
(Deemed unsuitable for younger viewers)
* Viewers stunned by 'harrowing and shocking' Channel 4 documentary
(Metro, with a quote from me):
http://metro.co.uk/2015/01/24/viewers-stunned-by-harrowing-and-shocking-...
* Holocaust Memorial Day site: http://hmd.org.uk/
* The Eight Stages of Genocide: http://hmd.org.uk/page/holocaust-genocides
* More on HMD from Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/hmd
* 'From 1915 to 2015: the challenge of the Armenian Genocide
centenary', by Dr Harry Hagopian, Ekklesia:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21272
(c) Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21376
Jan 27 2015
'Keep the memory alive': Holocaust Memorial Day 2015
by Simon Barrow on 27 January 2015 - 7:45am
Events are taking place around the British and Irish isles to mark
Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday 27 January 2015. The theme for this
year is 'Keep the memory alive'.
Seventy commemorative candles designed by Anish Kapoor are being lit
in every part of the country, to represent the 70 years since the
liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Earlier this week, Channel 4 television showed a remarkable
documentary entitled 'Night Will Fall' about the story of those who
filmed the terrible scenes in the Nazi death camps for a movie by
Sidney Bernstein (with assistance from Alfred Hitchcock) which was not
completed or shown immediately after the war, due to the sensitivity
of the material.
It contains some of the most graphic and horrific documentary evidence
of the crimes committed, and is a difficult to watch as it is
important. It also features filmmaker Branko Lustin, a producer who
filmed in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and who gave his account of
what it was like to film inside the camps. "I had peered into hell...
it is hard to describe," he said.
'Night Will Fall', which lasts 80 minutes, has been screened in over
15 countries in the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day, and will be
available online for another 27 days, as well as on catch-up TV
provider services.
Meanwhile, the HMD website contains a good overview article on 'The
Holocaust and the Genocides' (plural) which sets out the horror that
afflicted many millions under the Nazis, and other atrocities,
including the Armenian Genocide, which is still not officially
recognised by Turkey, Israel and others.
In fact the term 'genocide' was first used in 1933, in a paper
presented to the League of Nations by the Polish lawyer, Raphael
Lemkin. He devised the concept in response to the atrocities
perpetrated against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire
between 1915 and 1923.
On 11 December 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations
resolved that genocide was a crime under international law. This was
approved and ratified as a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948.
The Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- killing members of the group
- causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group".
Gregory H Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, has developed a
typology of the Eight Stages of genocide which explains the different
components that lead to genocidal outcomes.
References and resources:
* 'Night Will Fall' (C4):
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/holocaust-night-will-fall/on-demand/5...
(Deemed unsuitable for younger viewers)
* Viewers stunned by 'harrowing and shocking' Channel 4 documentary
(Metro, with a quote from me):
http://metro.co.uk/2015/01/24/viewers-stunned-by-harrowing-and-shocking-...
* Holocaust Memorial Day site: http://hmd.org.uk/
* The Eight Stages of Genocide: http://hmd.org.uk/page/holocaust-genocides
* More on HMD from Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/hmd
* 'From 1915 to 2015: the challenge of the Armenian Genocide
centenary', by Dr Harry Hagopian, Ekklesia:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21272
(c) Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21376